…No Bones About It!

Keeping Daylight Saving Time Year-Round: Longer Light Later

If you know me — even a little — you’ve heard me fuss about changing the clocks. I hate, hate, hate it when we turn the clocks back. I’m terribly sensitive to light and require a great deal of it. What a good thing it is that I ended up in Southern California!

After I retired I discovered that I have no bucket list. I have, however, repeatedly pledged to work to fix the clock thing when I retired. I am retired. It’s really the only thing I ever said I’d do when I retired, to stop the clocks from moving back in the fall. I’ve said it for years. When I retire, I’m gonna work to keep us on Daylight Saving Time year-round. Not getting rid of it, as was contemplated in the California Legislature last session.

People forget that they ever knew how to drive. Traffic and work-related accidents increase. On the Monday after we turn the clocks back, doctors and emergency rooms watch for up to 25% more heart attacks. One study estimated lost productivity at $434 million annually. A 2008 U.S. Department of Energy report shows the change results in energy costs higher than staying “an hour ahead.” Reports and studies cite potentially detrimental long-term effects: disruption in the quality of sleep, biological and circadian rhythm disruptions, memory loss and confusion.

According to Medline Plus, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.) is a type of depression that happens during the winter when people do not get much sunlight.

Symptoms include “feelings of sadness, loneliness, altered sleeping and eating patterns, negative thoughts and feelings of guilt, lethargy and disturbed sleep patterns; overeating and developing a craving for carbohydrates and sweet foods; difficulty with concentration and memory; and social problems such as finding it difficult to be around others,” NJ.com reports.

According to a 2014 Rasmussen survey of American adults, 48% don’t think the ritual of changing the clocks twice a year “is worth it.” Nineteen percent are not sure. Thirty-three percent deemed it “worth the hassle,” down from 37% the year before and 45% in 2012.

But I’m retired and this is the only thing on my non-existent bucket list (besides ending gun violence, homelessness, adult illiteracy, yoga, the grandbaby, the garden) so I’m going to try.

From the Mercury News, Daylight Saving Time is here to stay in California, July 5, 2017: “Last year, the California Legislature passed a bipartisan resolution asking Congress to approve a third option for states — permanent daylight saving time. South Bay Congressman Ro Khanna is now spearheading that effort in Washington, D.C.”

Let’s hope so! I’ve reached out to his district office. Know anyone there?

“Despite an increasingly fragmented political landscape, this temporal topic has united the country’s politicians of all ideological orientations, from the left to the far-right. All 13 Finnish Members of European Parliament have pledged to work to abolish daylight saving time.”

Fact is, we adapt. Halfway into the first week we remember how to drive, that it’s not late; it’s just dark. For those of us especially attuned to light, there are effective strategies to deal with the darkness here and also here.

But why? Why?

Is it wrong to want to keep it light longer later?

Help me figure this one out, please.

What do we call the fight? It’s confusing. There are organizing and political efforts ongoing, and I hope to connect with that work. So, again, know anyone? No wheels reinvented here.

Lock the Clock wants Standard Time permanently. Stop the Clock appears to suggest an individual response, keeping one’s own clocks on DST while the rest of the world goes back and forth. He admits it worked for about a month. The Standard Time folks intriguingly propose to move the whole country to two non-changing time zones.

“I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen. As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it. At the back of the daylight saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.” ~Robertson Davies